


Get Dressed You Merry Gentlemen

by tepidspongebath



Series: Christmas Fics [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Decorations, Fluff, M/M, carols
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-06 02:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1101473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tepidspongebath/pseuds/tepidspongebath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein John is enthusiastic about the Christmas season, and Sherlock is considerably more enthusiastic than he lets on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Carols

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snogandagrope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snogandagrope/gifts).



> An overdue fic for her contribution to Fics for the Philippines. Thank you, and Merry Christmas!

“What the _hell_ are you doing?”

John grinned at Sherlock as he stormed into the flat. He had come upstairs so quickly (three steps at a time, going by the tremendous clattering) that little eddies of snow were still coming off of his coat in puffs with every swish of it. His cheeks and the tip of his nose were pink from the cold, and his long gloved hands were pressed firmly against his ears.

“Hello, Sherlock,” he said, letting mirth and good cheer and an unhealthy amount of amusement steal into his tone over the music. “Usually the other way around, isn’t it?”

His flatmate tossed his head, clearly not appreciating the irony. “Well?” he demanded, waving a hand at the open boxes and shopping bags filled with suspiciously shiny odds and ends, and ending with an accusing finger pointed at the speakers attached to John’s laptop.

“I’m decorating,” John said, showing what he meant by holding up a yard of tinsel from the bag in front of him for Sherlock’s inspection. “For Christmas, you know. It being December and all. Unless you’ve deleted that this year?”

“I haven’t deleted it,” snapped Sherlock. “It would be impossible to delete it, even if I were to be so foolish as to waste energy trying. The same thing every year – a mindless rush to buy presents everybody secretly hates, putting up horrible meaningless ‘decorations’ to be taken down and thrown away at the end of the season, and, my personal favorite, forced goodwill unto all when the truth is that all evidence suggests that Jesus was born in the spring, only the founders of Christianity decided that they needed a winter festival to rival the Saturnalia and the Kalends of ancient Rome!”

“All right,” said John mildly, now unearthing a string of fairy lights. “I always did put you down as a Scrooge type, though I didn’t realize you’d feel so strongly--”   

“A what?” Sherlock turned towards him, sharp and sudden in the middle of removing his coat.

“Scrooge. You know, Ebenezer Scrooge? Charles Dickens? ‘A Christmas Carol’? ‘Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine’? ‘Decrease the surplus population’? ‘Boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart’? Doesn’t ring a bell? Oh well, I expected it might not.”

“Bah!” And Sherlock punctuated this by throwing himself into his armchair.

“Humbug. Yes, that exactly,” laughed John. “You look cold, Sherlock. Fancy some cocoa?”

“Cocoa? What happened to our coffee?”

“It’s still in the kitchen. I haven’t sacrificed it to the ghosts of Christmas if that’s what’s worrying you, but if you want any, you’ll have to make it yourself.” And John started to hum along to the music playing on his computer, determined not to let any irate consulting detectives spoil his mood.

At this Sherlock let out a pained groan. “It’s bad enough,” he said, pressing the balls of his palms over his eyes, “that you’re planning to festoon the flat in tinsel and branches and fairy lights. It’s worse that you’re keen on holiday drinks. But what I cannot stand is that – that awful din you’re listening to. It’s like you’re trying to force Christmas in through my ears, how can you _think_ with that going on?”

“You’re not supposed to think,” answered John, and he had to own that it was getting ever so slightly more difficult to remain meek and mild. “They’re carols. They’re supposed to be warm and jolly and things. I’ll admit,” he continued, “they’re not _traditional_ carols, they’re a bit rocked up, but you can’t mean you object to _carols_.”

Sherlock made a disgusted noise somewhere between a snort and a sigh. “Carols _are_ objectionable, John. They were originally dances, and thus thought unseemly for church use until around 300 years after they decided on the winter date for Christmas. Yours are particularly objectionable because they’re not even being done properly.”

John blinked. He knew that Ritchie Sambora playing ‘O Holy Night’ on the electric guitar might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but on top of everything else Sherlock was objecting to, he felt that this was a bit much. He was rather fond of his modern carol renditions. “Oh? And I suppose you know how to do it properly then?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Sherlock sprang out of his chair, stalked over to John’s laptop, closed the music player (without, of course, so much as glancing at John for permission), grabbed his violin from where he’d left it next to a half-empty mug of coffee, and stalked the next few feet of floor space to his music stand. That must have been for effect rather than the actual need to use a reference, because he paused with the instrument under his chin for a few seconds, eyes closed as though he was retrieving something from a corner of his mind palace, and began to play. 

John would be the first to admit that he was no expert on music – the clarinet had been the beginning and the end for him. But he liked to listen, and he liked listening to Sherlock, and by now he could tell when Sherlock was merely going through the notes and when there was a little something extra to his playing. And as he drew forth the melody of ‘O Holy Night’ purely from memory, with the music giving the very air in the room more depth and meaning and near magic, John couldn’t help but smile. He refrained from commenting, not wanting to put Sherlock off, and they spent the rest of the evening with John quietly and contentedly sorting the new ornaments and the ones he’d saved from last year while a completely absorbed Sherlock played carol after supposedly objectionable carol. 


	2. Ornaments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An explanation: This was largely inspired by the holiday decor at the local Animal Bite Treatment Center. 
> 
> And an apology and an excuse: *sheepish look* Christmas lasts until Epiphany?

The next morning, John got up early and sat at the table in the living room with a nice wreath, and a very nice length of ribbon (a deep Christmas red with gold trim on the edges). He also had a mug of cocoa to keep him company, but it had been shoved to the side and largely forgotten as he tried, with varying but never satisfactory degrees of success, to twine the ribbon about the wreath in a pleasing and artistic manner. He kept tying and retying it until the ribbon was crumpled, pine needles were scattered on the table (and he suspected that some had worked their way into his jumper), his hands were pricked and itchy, and the cocoa was cold and starting to congeal. John was becoming increasingly cross, and by the time Sherlock emerged yawning from his room, not even the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s ‘Wizards of Winter’ could do much to improve his mood.

Sherlock wrinkled his nose when he noticed what John was listening to, but said nothing on the subject as he took the chair opposite him. Instead, he reached over and plucked at the ribbon. “That’s not going very well,” he said.

It was mild, as statements from Sherlock went, and John knew that he probably meant nothing by it, but he was in such a snit that he couldn’t let it pass. “No, I’m not having much luck with it,” he said testily. “And I know it’s just the ribbon – God knows what will happen when I get to the rest of the little ornaments, and I’ve got a lot of them. I suppose,” he went on, yanking a loop of ribbon off of the wreath for what felt like the hundredth time that morning, “you think you can do better.”

Sherlock yawned again, covering his mouth with one long hand, and stretched in his seat so that his dressing gown fell open and his tatty gray shirt rode up a few inches, exposing the waistband of his pyjamas and a sliver of pale stomach. “I know I can,” he said when he was done.

John glared at him. It wasn’t what he’d said so much as the way he’d said it, as if he took it for granted that he would be better than John at holiday handicrafts if he could be arsed to try. He wanted to see Sherlock back that statement up with incontrovertible evidence before he accepted it.

“Making another wreath would be a waste of time,” said Sherlock (John supposed he’d read the challenge in the line of his nose or the movement of his eyebrows or the particularly vicious way he pulled at the ribbon). “You’re keen on finishing that one yourself – though you’ll have to leave it for later, don’t you have work? – and having more than one wreath in a flat this size would frankly be overdoing it, especially with all the other seasonal trappings you plan to burden us with. Excuse me.”

 _Ha!_  thought John as Sherlock stalked off to the kitchen. He took a sip of his cold cocoa, made a face, and went back to the task of trying to bend the ribbon to his will. He was so absorbed in this that he almost didn’t notice when Sherlock came back. What alerted him to his flatmate’s presence was a cardboard box being dropped unceremoniously on the table, followed by two mugs of cocoa set down with rather more care.          

“I saw you had an entire saucepan of cocoa on the stove,” explained Sherlock. “It hardly seemed worth the trouble to make coffee with all of that just sitting there. And I assumed this was yours,” he added, tapping the bright green mug with its pattern of manically cheerful cartoon reindeer.

“Yes. Yes, it is. Thank you.” It was uncommonly nice of Sherlock, and it coaxed a smile out of John, beleaguered as he was by uncooperative Christmas decorations. “It’s not drugged, is it?” he asked, pausing with the drink halfway to his lips. That was something he asked as a matter of course ever since Baskerville. It _hadn’t_ been the sugar, so there actually hadn’t been any harm done on that front, but John felt that Sherlock could do with the occasional reminder that he was not infallible and that it was bad form to experiment on other people.

“Would I do that to you?”    

“Well--”

“Without good reason?”

“You and I have very different definitions of ‘good reason’.  And even then it’s not right to do it without asking.” John took a cautious sip of his drink. The cocoa was hot and…slightly different. Had Sherlock added more milk? More chocolate? Some sort of spice? Or, God forbid, a chemical of some kind? Well, whatever it was, it certainly didn’t hurt the flavor. It improved it, in fact.

One corner of Sherlock’s mouth quirked upwards in a smirk when he saw how John was treating his cocoa. “You don’t need to worry, John. Now, I know you’re planning something hideous with red and green food coloring. Why don’t you save the biscuits the pain of being frosted and give me the dyes instead?”

“They’re in the cupboard above the sink. You can fetch them yourself if you want them.” John checked his watch, and almost choked on his cocoa in his hurry to drain his mug. “I need to go.”

“You’re going to be late. You should have left the wreath for later.”

“Yes, well, what was I supposed to do? Leave it to Santa’s little helpers?”

“You might as well have.” Sherlock indicated the bare wreath and the dejected tangle of ribbon with a jerk of his head. “And turn your damn music off before you go.”         

“Mmm, sure.” John picked up both of his mugs and gave Sherlock a quick kiss on the top of his head on the way to the kitchen. “Thanks for the cocoa.”

* * *

When he left, Sherlock was taking a couple of old hangers apart with a wire cutter, with one elbow awkwardly propped on his cardboard box. By the time John got home that afternoon, the box was empty on the coffee table and the hangers were providing the framework for what looked very much like a cleverly improvised chandelier around one of their ceiling lights. A three-tiered chandelier made out of carefully capped 5-millilitre syringes hung up by their plungers and alternatingly filled to capacity with red and green-tinted water. The effect, once you got past all those downward pointing (securely covered!) needles, was unexpectedly festive.  

“It’s better when you turn the light on,” said Sherlock by way of greeting and explanation.  He was sprawled on the sofa, trying not to look too pleased with himself and failing.

John flicked the switch before he went to sit next to Sherlock. The water caught the light and threw it onto the walls in a way that almost (but not quite) entirely clashed with the wallpaper. It was pretty, though, and strangely elegant, and Sherlock barely held back from preening when John told him so.           

“But why,” he said as carefully as he could, “do you have so many syringes?” The way Sherlock’s eyes went soft and the corners of his mouth went hard and tight made John’s insides crumple, but he did worry sometimes and he did have to ask. He threaded his fingers through his flatmate’s, squeezed his hand.

“I use them for measuring liquids,” answered Sherlock at length, rubbing his thumb against the side of John’s hand. “For experiments. They’re more precise than droppers, and they’re sterile besides. I wanted a pipettor actually, but Molly…objected…when she caught me trying to borrow one from her lab, though I think what really set her off was finding the box of sterile tips in my coat pocket. She wouldn’t even let me have the disposable stripettes. Or the aspirator. She almost took my lighter too, wouldn’t believe it was mine. Still doesn’t believe it probably – I had to wrestle it from her.”

“I see. Well, it’s very nice.” John sighed, leaning against Sherlock’s shoulder. “I’m going to have a hell of a time making a wreath to match.”


	3. Decorating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hard on the heels of Epiphany, and I hope this makes it!

“I just have to ask-”

“Of course you do.”

“I just have to ask,” said John again, “what you meant the other day—”

“It _was_ the sugar this time, the victim was the only one who took sugar in his tea, and the rest of them were in on it, they had lemon with theirs. I was right about the sugar, John, I was _right_.”

“‘All evidence suggests that Jesus was born in the spring’?”

“Ah.” Sherlock looked up from the evaporating dish filled with a small pile of tobacco ash (a label stuck to the side of it said ‘244’). “Still doing Christmas, are we?”

“Only the entire world is ‘doing Christmas’, Sherlock.” 

“Mmm, not necessarily, and it doesn’t make them right. Do you need a hand there, or should I fetch you a stepladder?”

John shot him a stern look, and the chair he was standing on wobbled precariously. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Well, don’t expect me to catch you.”

“Wasn’t counting on it.”

“Only a stepladder would be much safer, and with the one Mrs. Hudson has downstairs, you’d even have somewhere to put that box.” Sherlock absentmindedly prodded at the ash with one long finger. “Though it might be wiser for you to abandon that altogether. You’ve already got the wreath on the door, and my syringes, and that dismal little bush—”

“That dismal bush is a Christmas tree!”

“So you keep saying.”

“And I was asking you a question.”

“You don’t really want to know.”

“I do, actually.” Apart from a very real curiosity, John figured that it was the one way he’d get Sherlock to contribute to the holiday spirit, unless he could lure him into playing the violin again. In the interest of peace and goodwill, the doctor had left off playing his modern carols (Sherlock stalking about the flat with earmuffs on had been enough of a hint), but it was absolutely disheartening to be doing the decorating without some sort of Christmas-y thing in the aural background.

Sherlock sighed theatrically, dropping the dish onto the kitchen table for emphasis. “Fine. Discounting the fact that there isn’t much reliably known about Jesus as a historical figure as opposed to how he is presented as the center of a religious cult-”

“That’s Christianity!”

“A religious cult,” said Sherlock as if this proved his point. “Anyway, you know the Christmas story. You can deduce it from there, even if you ignore the stretching done to make it coincide with the Old Testament.”

“Really?”

“You know the carols, John. ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night’? ‘The angel did say, to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay’? That wouldn’t happen in winter, temperatures can drop to below freezing in that part of the world – any self-respecting shepherd would have had his flocks indoors or penned up. No, the watching of flocks by night is much more likely to happen in spring: lambing season, relatively mild temperatures, you get the picture. And let’s not even start on the Magi.”

“Okay, we won’t. I won’t even ask how you know so much about the habits of ancient Middle Eastern shepherds.”

“It was useful.”

“Right. Could you pass me that box, please, that one over there next to the skull?”         

“It’s holly. _Fake_ holly.” Sherlock wrinkled his nose in disgust, shoved the box at John as if he couldn’t get it out of his hands fast enough.

“It’s good fake holly. You should have seen the rest of the stuff they were selling.”

“ _Fake_ holly!”

“Yes, fake holly.” John stuck a sprig of it into the similarly fake evergreen garlands that he’d managed to put up over the kitchen doorway. “I defy you to do better.”

* * *

Given how the last couple of days had gone, John realized that he shouldn’t have been surprised when he came downstairs later in the day to find Sherlock alighting from a stepladder. He had apparently just finished hanging something new in pride of place at the center of the kitchen door’s lintel. It was a bunch of leafy sprigs held together by a scarlet ribbon: the rounded leaves were a gold-tinged green, and small white berries were very much in evidence.

“Mistletoe,” Sherlock announced. “ _Viscum album._ The golden bough.”

“Where did you even get that?”

“It wasn’t difficult, given the season. Now, I think there’s a tradition.” And there was Sherlock, standing in the doorway under the mistletoe, smiling like a challenge. “Hard to track down the exact origins, it seems to have come from all over the place. European mistletoe was important in many ancient cultures, particularly when it grows on oak. This one” –he indicated it with a slight upward nod—“would have been considered an inferior sort, it came from an apple tree. I believe it was of some significance in the Saturnalia – evergreen, blooms in winter, very special, you can follow the reasoning. It was certainly associated with the Norse goddess of love and the druids did use it as an aphrodisiac, among other medicinal applications, although in the current context, I think the most significant of these is its supposed role in enhancing fertility. Of course, this was a bit too racy for 16th century Christians, much more racy than they wanted their Christmas decorations to be, so kissing under the mistletoe came to signify a promise of marriage, if not to the person doing the kissing, at least the person being kissed could expect to be married in the coming year, and eventually, as you know, it turned into just ki-”

“Oh, shut up.” And because it was what you did under the mistletoe at Christmastime, because Sherlock really needed to stop talking, and because he bloody well wanted to, he went up on his toes and kissed Sherlock Holmes.

He meant for it to be quick, but something changed along the way: he leaned forward a bit too much, Sherlock parted his lips and his hands were on John’s waist, and he did that clever thing with his tongue that always made John weak at the knees, and he had to grab Sherlock’s shoulders to stay upright, but Sherlock had already put a steadying hand on the small of his back, which meant he could move his own hands up to Sherlock’s neck, tangle his fingers in those curls, and it was good, it was very, very good, and by the time Sherlock pulled away, John was ready to fall on his knees to give thanks and praise to any and all of the deities who’d had a hand in making kissing under the mistletoe a modern Christmas tradition.

“What would happen,” he said, slightly dazed and out of breath, “if I strung garlands of mistletoe over the bed?”

“You’d get sticky fingers.” Sherlock held up his own hands in evidence, and the corner of his mouth quirked upwards in a smile that not even the most generous and forgiving of Christmas elves could keep off the naughty list. “And I’d say you were getting greedy, but it’s Christmas, so I suppose that’s all right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference, I read [these](http://www.kew.org/plants-fungi/Viscum-album.htm) [articles](http://www.apsnet.org/publications/apsnetfeatures/pages/mistletoe.aspx) on mistletoe, and Rumer Godden's 'The History of Christmas', and I am very thankful for all the holiday literature.


End file.
